Between 1957 and 1965 over 150 sword-and-sandal movies were unleashed on the American public. But when MGM archivist and gladiator-film buff John Kirk started researching the popular genre, he found very few mentions of Hercules and Goliath movies in film-history texts. “It’s as if they were nonexistent or too embarrassing to bring up, which is strange to consider, since they were quite popular and made quite a bit of money for the film industry,” he says.
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One of the first of these dubbed, Italian-made films to hit U.S. shores was 1957’s Hercules, starring a buff, scantily clad Steve Reeves in the title role. Its success led to a slew of similar movies, which created a new demand for bodybuilders. “Before, bodybuilding was not a common thing,” Kirk says. “Bodybuilders were usually seen as circus freaks or people who did specialty acts or something.”
Kirk was ten when he saw Hercules, his first gladiator film, at a matinee in 1960. “I loved movies but was no fan of action movies–I didn’t like westerns or big war pictures or anything like that. But when I saw it, it stimulated something. It wasn’t until junior high or something that I realized there was any kind of sexual attraction to it.”
